Downtown Merchants, Planners Prepare for Construction, Parking

Signs, shuttles, special parking permits. These are among the ideas being considered to battle the upcoming downtown parking crunch.

Jackhammers and wrecking balls will descend on downtown Ventura this summer to start work on a four-story parking structure and 10-screen movie theater, but merchants and city officials are scrambling now to devise a plan to ease the inevitable parking pinch.

On Thursday afternoon, a task force of downtown merchants and city planners gathered to fine-tune a plan to help get through the construction period.

Downtown Ventura already suffers a shortage of parking places. There are about 1,200 public spaces from Ventura Avenue east to Ash Street, and from Poli Street south to the freeway. That doesn’t include parking at City Hall and the beachfront parking structure.

Merchants say customers often have to circle the block several times to find a space.

The problem will grow worse when construction begins on the new 500-space parking structure on the public lot near the corner of Santa Clara and California streets. The structure will temporarily eliminate 125 prime spaces.

The upcoming construction conjures up visions of chaotic parking problems for merchants who remember downtown’s sidewalk reconstruction in 1995, when they said sales fell about 25% to 35%. Many merchants say their business is just now bouncing back.

Anticipating what could become a parking nightmare, city officials and merchants are on the parking offensive to keep shoppers coming downtown. They are drawing maps of alternative public parking places to distribute to shop owners, encouraging shop employees to park away from downtown, and discussing beginning shuttle and trolley service to outlying parking lots.

“What we’re trying to do is keep the main parking lots open for customers,” said Diane Neveu, a member of the Downtown Ventura Assn.’s parking task force. “We also want to make it easy for merchants to have all-day parking.”

Balancing the city’s concerns with those of merchants has at times been difficult, according to officials.

The two groups were able to reach a general consensus on a draft plan Thursday, according to Tom Figg, planning and redevelopment director, who added that they still must hammer out some logistics on the ambitious $65,200 parking plan.

“Of course the plan will have to reflect the concerns of merchants of the 500 block [of Main Street], since they will be most impacted,” he said. The plan must ultimately go before City Council.

The plan calls for:

* Larger parking lot signs, to provide better direction to existing parking lots.

* Designated parking for parking structure construction workers, at the beachfront parking structure at the foot of California, and parking for the theater construction workers on a construction staging area behind the theater building.

* Sponsoring a shuttle from more distant public parking lots to downtown and rerouting an existing trolley so it stops at public parking lots.

* Large colorful parking lot banners hung from the street lamps to designate public lots.

* Free maps identifying all the public parking lots downtown.

* A parking permit program for downtown merchants and their employees during construction. If approved, all parking lots in the downtown “core” will be designated for three-hour parking during construction, except for drivers working downtown, who would be allowed to park all day. They will also be allowed to park free in the Holiday Inn’s parking structure. Tim O’Neil, the head of the Downtown Ventura Assn., said he is most worried about how merchants will survive construction in the coming months. “It’s not the parking that’s the problem,” he said. “We’re worried about measures to help merchants through the next year and a half.”

The city is also working with downtown merchants to come up with ways to publicize and advertise the downtown project, such as a biweekly newsletter and press releases. There will also be a hotline set up with the latest construction information.

Construction on the parking structure is scheduled to begin in June, and the theater in August.